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Saturday, September 14, 2013

The Omniscience: Becca in the Maze

Do you like it? I photoshopped it myself. On the bottom left is Jennifer Lawrence-as-Lilah, my book's main character, and on the upper right is Karen Gillian-as-Becca, the main character of this excerpt.

So, I haven't been writing a lot of new stuff recently, though hopefully that will change as Creative Writing class gets in full gear. Still, I thought you lovely blog-stalkers readers deserved a new morsel of writing, so here's another excerpt from The Omniscience, my currently-being-revised Nanowrimo 2011 novel. More info on the book here.

Longtime blog followers will have already met Lilah, the main protagonist. Now it's time to meet another crucial character--Becca Pond.

Becca in the Maze

Owon
had taken care to tell the Omni-goers to stay in their rooms, no
matter what. So the first thing Becca did when she got in the Mech
was try to get outta hers.

It
wasn't a rebel thing, though she did have streak of that. It wasn't
due to a lack of smarts or sense, though some luddite teachers and
their screwed-up tests had told her otherwise. It wasn't for a thrill,
though what little she'd gleaned of the Omni's spidery innerworkings
looked like quite the adventure. She wasn't panicking. She wasn't
afraid. She just needed to get her hands all over Mark. It'd been way
too long since their last make-out session.

But
Omni seemed bent to hell on making that difficult. As soon as Becca
had set foot in the room, the simulate walls had configured
themselves into a life-sized labrat
maze.
Finding her way to even one
of the real walls was gonna be a hell of an obstruct, never mind
finding a concealed door that could be on any
of the walls. Becca could just picture the Mech smirking, an eyebrow
raised. You
reckon you can beat me now?

Hell
yeah. 'Course I can.

She
whipped out the map in her coat pocket, the one Mark had got from his
uncle and given to her, a map that showed all rooms, paths, and
tunnel systems
inside the Omni. Mark said he'd be in room R-4.
By the number on the side of her elevator, Becca would guess that she
was in K-30,
which had a door opening up to the tunnel system on the east side.
And now that she'd figured that out, the Omni'd spin her around to
disorient her all any moment now...

No?
It wasn't? Clockwork. Turn
left.

Before
she headed off, though, she was gonna need some thread. Rummaging
around in her tool belt's pockets, she pulled out a ball of steel
string and a roll of ever-handy duct tape. Attaching one end of the
string to the floor with some tape would make her able to backtrack
and retrace her steps. There. Like Theseus in the labyrinth. Ancient
Civ class had proved useful, for once.

Left,
right, left, right. Right. Right. No, left. Damn. This was more
confusing than Becca'd thought it would be. Her feet were too slow,
either that or her mind was too fast—she'd be thinking three steps
ahead of where she actually was at and miss a crucial turn, forcing
her to wind her way back around the bends, and backtracking only
reinforced the old
pathway in her brain—the wrong
pathway—that she would keep absentmindedly following and coming to
the same dead ends she could've avoided in the first place if her
brain hadn't been busy trying to map out the grand scheme of the maze
and the most efficient route to take in order to get to that door
that opened up to the tunnels which would no doubt be yet another
maze to go through which was all so screwing pointless-

BREATHE,
DAMMIT!

Becca
closed her eyes and sighed. Her mind was going down that spiral
again. If she wasn't careful, she'd end up giving herself a
concussion slamming her head against the maze walls, and then where
would she be? She was wasting time. Mark only had a few hours left in
the Omni.

Come
on, Beck. Think. You're not gonna let this screwed-up hunk of metal
cheat you out of make-out time, right?

She
glanced up at the maze walls surrounding her. They were, what, a foot
away from reaching the top of the ceiling? That was enough room. She
had a grappling hook—or the head of one, anyway—in her tool belt.
All she would need to do was tie it to some of the string and she
could pull herself up over the wall. Then she could see to where the
real
walls were and bypass the maze altogether!Ha!

“I
beat you,” she said under her breath, knowing the Mech would hear.
“Hammer meet nail.”

The
Omni didn't challenge the claim.

Becca
beamed as she clambered up the first wall. Pushing her way through
the gap, she could see that the east side of the room was... right
there. Three feet away from her nose. What the-

Beck,
you idiot.
Of course
the wall was right there—the rooms in this place were only 120
square feet! The Omni had just been simulating
space! Hell, there were probably only, like, eight actual walls,
total!

Okay.
Okay. Clockwork. That actually made things a lot easier. Becca kicked
off from the top of the wall and fell, grappling hook lodging
between two panels of the real wall just in time for her to swing
down to the ground. She ran her hand across the panels, searching for
the door. Suspense-field feedback? Check. Disturbances in simulate
experiences? Definite check. So this was it, then. Becca pushed
against the wall. It lit up in a kinda creepy shade of blue. Moments
later, the door slid open.

The
“tunnel,” she knew, was only an elevator shaft with ladders
lining all four sides. Since elevators already had to have extensive
pathways to be able to reach any room in the Omniscience, the Mech
Ministry'd decided to make the shaft just a little wider than the
elevators and stick ladders on the walls in order to save space.
Typical luddite officials. Always thinking of how to cut back on
things.

Becca
grabbed the nearest rung and started climbing straight up. Another
map check—yep, she was headed in the right direction.

There
was one day of overlap between Mark and her Omni sessions. The two of
them'd planned last week to spend that day together and give the Omni
hell until it was forced to send them both to the same city, wherever
that was. Well, Mark hadn't said “give it hell”—he was too
couth for that. He'd said something more along the lines of
“overwhelm it with the sheer power of our love”. But Becca knew
what he'd really
meant.

Becca
climbed faster, grappling rung after rung after rung. Ugh. Why was
this taking so screwing long?
Was this another one of the Mech's mind games? It'd better
not be. I'll
strip the damn thing for parts one day,
she thought with a sigh. Now where the hell was M-

Snap.

The
thick cable next to her recoiled onto itself and fell eighty feet
down to the bottom of the shaft.